We went to West Yellowstone with John this weekend to help him get settled into his new apartment a little bit. The kids made themselves right at home.
The first thing Eloise asked for after we got everything unloaded was to be let out on the balcony. It's her favorite feature of John's apartment, and she'd just sit out there all day if it wasn't cold.
I'd put some pictures of John's apartment here, but he decided to take pictures of every room as soon as we had gotten everything unloaded and brought in, so they're pictures of like every surface covered with piles of crap. Before we had dinner, we had to run into town to buy a gallon of milk and a couple boxes of baking soda for the fridge. Our children acted like they'd never been inside a grocery store before, loudly and excitedly exclaiming over every product on the shelves. After that, we came back and had dinner and went to bed. Eloise was restless sleeping in a new place, so the only one that got much sleep was Serafina.
After breakfast (which occurred at 5:45 am), we opened the curtains to see if we had a good view of the sunrise. Fina noticed some bison wandering around by the houses farther down the road, and she watched them until they disappeared down the road. Then Eloise went out on the balcony and was looking around, and suddenly she yelled, "Uh-oh! Look!" and we all came out just in time to see a fox bounding across the yard with something in its mouth.
After a while, the bison reappeared. Right in our back yard. This dude thought the sign was a super good scratching post.
Fina sat out on the balcony and watched them for a long time.
Here's a shot that shows how close they were.
After the bison left, Fi played with Eloise through the window for a while. Then we all hung out and they played and John and I just chatted and relaxed until about 10 when I decreed that it was time to pack up our lunch and go into Yellowstone Park.
We were driving along and I saw a pull-out that was pretty full of cars and a huge crowd standing just across from it, so I yelled at John to pull into the pull-out because at this time of year, that many people is signal that there is something very cool. He didn't pull into the pull-out, just kept driving slowly and told me to see if I could see what they were looking at. I yelled at him "Just park the damn car, it's a bear!" He had to walk back way farther to take a picture than he would have if he had just listened to me in the first place. Eloise was asleep but I got Fina out and let her walk over and look. He was much farther away than it appears in this picture.
Next stop was the old faithful visitor center. This was in the kid's room, and it was about animal tracking. I decided to see if Fi remembered anything from learning about bears in school, so I took her over and said, "Fina, which ones are the bear tracks?" She knew. Then we discussed what the others were, and then we realized Eloise had just fallen off a step of this stair thing while we were both busy focusing on Fina. Oops. She was fine, she just got up and shook herself off and came and got her blanket out of the stroller and held it for a minute to calm down.
The stair Eloise is standing on in this picture is what she fell off of. Fina was running up the stairs on the side and then jumping off the ledges with some other little girl. At first they were just jumping down the stairs, but then Fi got brave and was jumping off the ledges themselves. It was kind of an obnoxious use of the visitor center, but us and that other family were the only ones in the kid room so we just let them have their fun while it wasn't crowded. (I thought it was kind of funny that Fina's new BFF by nature of being within a few years of the same age and in the same place at the same time had the same sneakers as Fi.) Fi;s little pal (who I guessed to be a young 3) would walk to the edge of the ledges and look down and then run over and jump down the stairs, and Eloise would run over to the edges, yell "Jump!" and then turn around and slide down to the next step on her tummy real fast. It was pretty funny to watch 3 kids with different developmental levels keeping up with each other. (yes, my kids are my science project.)
When we were done being obnoxious, we went out into the main portion of the visitor's center to learn more facts about Yellowstone. Eloise wanted to climb into this display and play with the taxidermied coyote.
I found a thing that gave you a list of things to find in the display, and set Fina to work finding them. She got all the ones that she knew what they were, and then we looked at the answers to see which flowers were which and stuff like that.
This thing is a pH meter that you slide and it shows you what common household product has that pH, and which features in Yellowstone share it. Fina just liked sliding the lever and making the squares light up, she didn't care about pH levels. Give her a couple more years I guess. (Yellowstone park is basically acidic fyi.)
Another interactive display. Fina is so fun to take to Yellowstone because she loves every minute of it.
Eloise getting ready for Old Faithful to erupt. She looks tired, I wonder if that has anything to do with getting up at 3 AM and not settling back down. Also she was giving the side eye to some guys on the bench next to us because they were speaking a foreign language and she found it fascinating and/or disturbing.
I'm not above the posed cliche picture. Fina with old faithful erupting in the background.
After Old Faithful, we went to a picnic area. This jaunty fellow was cawing at us and telling us a sob story about how harsh the winter was and how the rangers would never know if we just tossed him a bit of sandwich. I told him no, but it didn't stop him from watching us closely.
I saw this woodpecker land in the tree, so I grabbed John's camera and took a picture. He was really pondersome of what I might be photographing, until I showed him the picture and then pointed out what tree it was. He tried to move closer and take some more pictures, but the bird thought it was funny and stuck everything but its butt into the hole when he tried to photograph it.
Fina went for a walk around our picnic area while I was cleaning up, and she came running back and said, "Mommy! I found this little tiny baby tree and then next to it I saw something that looked like a snake's tail so I ran away from it!"
When I was done we walked over to see what she had found, and she had found this plant that does look remarkably snake-ish. I am pretty sure that its common name is actually snake grass.
Forced my children to pose on a fallen log. Eloise is making the biggest ham face, right at Fina and not at the camera.
John took this while Fi and I were at the outhouse. Eloise was really enjoying that bug juice. I complimented him on it and he got excited and told me he had remembered how I told him that when you photograph children you should try to get close to their level so he sat right on the ground and took her picture.
Peek-a-boo Fi.
Our jaunty friend had flown back up into a tree because Eloise was trying to catch him. I like how he looks on the dead branches. You'll be surprised to know that as soon as we got into the car he flew down from his tree and started searching the picnic table for crumbs. On the way out of the park, we stopped at one more place and took more buffalo pictures, and then once we got back into West Yellowstone, Fina finally allowed herself to fall asleep so we drove down some side roads on the way back to John's apartment to let the kids sleep.
It was a pretty exhausting day, so they laid around a bit when we got back. I thought it was so cute how they shared the rocking chair. This morning when it was time to go home, Fina said, "can't we just go back into the park and spend one more night at Daddy's new house?" It was pretty fun. And we got a nice list of things for John to bring when he comes back, like a spatula or other cooking utensils (yeah, cooking was an adventure this weekend), and plastic cups so we don't have to keep giving the kids these fiddly glass ones.
